Preparation : Sergeant Frog/Keroro Gunso : Manga : Fan Fiction : Fiction : Main

Chapter 5
Preparation

On the day before the dance, and Natsumi and her thankfully, but almost-never free-from-work mother were perusing the myriad of dresses available at a local department store. Mama was in her element, busily squealing over the new fashions in her size and making many a trip to the dressing room. Natsumi was on her own to choose her outfit.

Thank goodness for that, Natsumi mused as she held a promising sky blue number against herself and turned to face a mirror. Most mothers insist they help their daughters choose what looks good.

As she searched through the dresses, she had ample time to brood. Saburo's avoided me all month and now he turns me down on-air! she frowned as she put back a black slip of a dress that left nothing to the imagination. How can he expect to be a good boyfriend to anyone if he turns down an interesting date? She held out a pretty rainbow-sequined number, but put it back when she saw the size was too large, and the price a bit too high. If he only had half the courage and a quarter the personality of that frog… Unbidden, the mental image of the surly red face brought a small smile to her own. Giroro wants to defend my honor, she thought. He never plays hard-to-get. He's so...

That brought her train of thought and her body to a sudden stop. Am I really comparing a man to a FROG? she asked herself in sudden realization, and with a perfect denial already formulated. She looked down at her feet, and imagined the scarred Keronian warrior offering her a perfectly roasted sweet potato. She shook her head resolutely. Get a hold of yourself, Natsumi! she commanded herself; You're not that desperate.

Yet, a little voice nagged insistently, maybe you are.

As she moved down to the next row of dresses, something red immediately caught her eye. Pouncing upon it as if stalking prey, she pulled it out, and immediately put all the other prospects away.

At least I have my dress, she thought victoriously.

---

Kururu had never seen Giroro so intent or intense. The crimson frog's scar throbbed and twitched. His eyes burned with fury. His knuckles were bruised and gritty as though he had repeatedly punched a stucco wall. "It must dance, Kururu. It must move."

"But Corporal. It was made to walk. Maybe to run. It was not made for such a neurologically complex task. It is heavy. It would fall. It can fight. It cannot feel. It cannot dance. Maybe, if you would tell me your mission I could create a substitute. Maybe a personal shield. Body armour. A holoim...."

"Do you think I don't know that, you moronic vent?" He abruptly knocked the technician to the floor. "My mission requires that my man-equin move with style and grace." Hustle. Slide. Bump. Bus Stop. Funk Down. "There will be no substitution! My mission is need to know and You. Do. Not. Need. To. Know." With each syllable he advanced on the tech.

"Corporal-san. It cannot dance. It cannot. It simply..." Kururu gulped as suddenly a gun-grey Agonizer 050 materialized under his slight chin, and crimson hands jabbed it's cold metal into his slick yellow flesh. The gun's pressure chamber was keening gently; a single osmium bullet in a steel sabot hovered in the accelerator.

Kururu muttered his final protestation, "What you demand of me is simply impossible."

"You will make it possible", growled Giroro, "or they will find your body in this week and your head in next week."

Kururu gulped, "I have some ideas."

"I thought you might", grunted Giroro. "By tomorrow night, then. No later. Understood?"

"I... I..."

"Tomorrow!" Giroro roared, His fingers tightened on the trigger and the Osmium bullet began to spin in the chamber. "Tomorrow, or I'll kill you and feed you to the neighbor's Poms!"

"I..." Kururu started.

"'Yes Corporal' is the answer you seek." Giroro insisted.

"Yes, Corporal. " Kururu acquiesced. He relaxed only marginally as Giroro withdrew the weapon. The angry red frog stomped from the lab. He left Kururu, already scrambling to gather tools and scrabbling over Giroro's man-equin, to work.

---

"You look so wonderful tonight, Natsumi!" Mama said for the umpteenth time, putting the finishing touches on her daughter's hair. "Though I wish you'd let me give your face just a little color.."

"Mama, you know I hate makeup," she sighed, having had this argument many times before, "It smells and makes my face itch." She regarded herself in the mirror, imagining herself with that gaudy stuff on; just the thought almost made her retch.

"It's too bad," Mama sighed, giving Natsumi's hair one last fluff. "Dressing you up reminds me of my school dances. They were so much fun…" She zoned out and she was in her youthful heyday: the shining disco ball suspended from the ceiling, Abba played and young Aki sashayed, her back grinding spine with a fiery, red-haired ninth year from the boy's school. Handsome as he was cultured and mature, he still couldn't sashay, she thought. But that hair...

"There," she said as her thoughts returned to the present. she released the final curler from her daughters mane. Fuyuki got his face from me. She regarded her daughter in the mirror. But Natsumi is all her Father. "Tell me what you think."

Natsumi twisted and turned in front of the mirror, and finally gave one last spin that had her dress billowing out around her. "It's perfect." I'm perfect.

"Good. Now maybe you can tell me who it is you're going to the dance with?" Mama queried as Natsumi came to a stop facing her.

Her daughter blanched, looking down with eyes that immediately began to well with tears; a look that clearly said the answer before she spoke it.

Mama quickly drew her daughter to her bosom and rocked her, calming her. "There there, baby. Going alone to a dance is not the end of the world. In fact, its better; you'll have your pick of the single boys, and the perfect opportunity to get to know them." Slowly relinquishing the embrace, she held her at arms length and looked into tear-stained eyes. "You are my daughter, and I know whatever you choose to do tonight and every other night will be the right thing." She picked up a hanky from the nearby dresser and dabbed at Natsumi's eyes.

Very much relieved, Natsumi gave a shaky smile and gave her mother a quick peck on the cheek. "Thanks, mama. You always know what to say."

Mama grinned devilishly. "Do I? Then maybe I should also tell you that although I trust you with every fiber of my being don't go around giving favours to every boy you meet. And always wrap it up if you're starting to mess around."

"M-o-o-o-o-om!"

---

"Kekeke, Victory! I have done much within your instructions and limited time requirement! It may not be what you expected, however." The yellow frog lectured as he skipped ahead of Giroro. The lab door was locked, but a few keypresses and a palmpad touch opened the sliding panel with a trite swish. Tracers of cold fog crept out menacingly from the bright light beyond.

Giroro skipped back and sniffed the air. Carbon Dioxide? Methane? Traces of Ammonia? Floor wax? Roses? he thought as the tangle of conflicting scents assailed his confused sinuses. Rosin? Heavy water? What in Keron did he do?

A fan purred happily at Kururu's spoken order and with a rainbow crackle of static discharge, abruptly the fog sucked back to wherever it was that fog sucked back to in a mad scientist's laboratory. The room was now sparkling clean. Every metal surface was polished to a faultless brightness. Every non-skid floor tile was black as unspent charcoal. Every gauge and telltale was spit and polished as though for an inspection by a modern Major General.

In the center of all that cleanliness was a metal gurney and even that was polished clean. Across it was draped a seemingly fresh, blindingly white linen sheet. Beneath the sheet was the outline of a prone Pokepenian form − headless, of course − in what Giroro could discern from the shadow was some sort of black attire. What confused the crimson warrior the most was that the outline of the man-equin seemed a half-meter too short!

"Ta-da," Kururu prestidigitated in the fan-blown air and with a whoosh the sheet lifted and fluttered garishly away. Kururu hopped forward and motioned to the table, "Kekekeke, he is wonderful."

To Giroro the rebuilt man-equin looked anything but wonderful. It wasn't a man-equin; it was at best a boy-equin: undersized, odorless and not at all muscled. He reached for Kururu's spindly throat and just missed as the yellow frog dodged to the other side of the gurney. "What the blood have you done, you, yellow-vent!"

"Didn't I just say I had to modify it?" Kururu inquired impatiently. "As tall as he was I couldn't maintain the center of gravity for fast motion. To dance one must move quickly, yes? So he is shorter now. He can dance without falling."

Giroro calmed by degrees. He still gestured angrily. "How will I even fit in this?!"

"It will be cramped," Kururu pressed, twisted and manipulated the petals on the boutonniere. One by one the buttons on the shirt slipped from their holes and the faux-flesh chest split from neck to sternum. The interior seemed filled with semi-rigid plush padding. "You see, there is just enough room for you to sit here with your legs bent. "Go on, try it. You shall see that you will fit."

Giroro's eyes slitted. What was the yellow frog up to? He tried to peer behind the deep tissue occulars to the beady eyes which would clue him to a threat, but the swirling rainbow of colour hid any hint of expression. Kururu may like to use me as a guinea pig and play dirty tricks on me, but not while I threaten him at gunpoint. I might as well try... "First show me how to open it. I may just have to kill you anyhow."

Kururu chuckled for what must be the twentieth time that evening. "Simply knock three times on your chest plate, as always, and it shall release. Or pull the eject bar", he pointed," and you will be expelled quite forcibly, I imagine." He looked ceiling-wards, and regarded the lighting fixtures and between them the rough surface etching of twenty meters of limestone, "On second thought. Use the chest plate." I don't want to have to clean the ceiling. Again.

Giroro reverse straddled the abdomen of the boy-equin and lay back into the foam cavity. He shoulder-crabbed upward until his neck was precisely aligned in the neck of the android body. He pulled his knees to his chest and nodded to Kururu, who triggered the chest with a momentous push.

The cavity closed and all the foam compressed about Giroro. The foam was cool; in fact, to Giroro, it felt no different from the air: same temperature, same pressure, same... why do I feel cold steel on may back and legs???

Kururu smirked yet again. "I see you have found the second modification I have made? Kekeke. That is sensation foam. Every cutaneous somatic sense he feels; you shall feel: tactition, thermoception, even nociception."

The final words meant nothing, but Giroro could certainly feel the pressure and flow of the air and the coolness of the table against the android's syntheskin, and he suspected if he were to hit himself; he would feel pain? He was tempted to give the requisite three knocks on the chest plate to see if the impacts would hurt.

"Where are the controls? How do I sit up?" and even as he was asking, he felt his angle to the table changing. He was rising, sitting. The cold metal surface was leaving his back. He could feel the fabric gather and flow along his skin. He could feel pressure increase on his buttocks as weight transferred, but more than all those changes, his cocooned body felt as though it was sitting up as well. Giroro was aware that he was fitted into the chest cavity with his knees pulled to his clavicle, but at the same time he knew instinctively where every limb of the shell was.

"Yes, even complete proprioception is processed by the foam. Cannot very well dance if you don't know where your limbs are without looking at them? You'd be even more horribly uncoordinated than usual!" The yellow frog pushed a lever and the gurney tilted and even as Giroro found himself sliding floor-ward he righted himself, caught his balance and gracefully stood. The servo-muscles in the bio-mechanical limbs barely even hummed.

Kururu finally permitted himself and earspot to earspot grin. "Try walking!"

Giroro was already trying more than that. He had already taken two steps forward, tried a leap in the air, then a leap with a half turn, then in one last attempt: he flipped onto his hands, walked on his palms before walking over. He pulled himself erect from the backbent position.

"Well?" Kururu drawled, quite smug.

Giroro grudgingly agreed. "I guess it is good enough. I shall take it with me on mission tonight and have it back by morning." He walked to the door, in complete awareness that the body already wanted to leap and jump, spin and defy gravity. He knew because he could feel the sensations in the very core of his froggy being.

"Corporal Giroro. One more detail I must mention." Kururu interrupted as he skittered in front of the disguised Corporal. "In order to meet the design requirements I had to take out most of the plasma cooling for the microfusion initiators. While vigorous activity may provide some degree of air cooling; operational mode should not be maintained for more than 4 hours without serious consequences."

"Translation?" asked Giroro with a skeptical wrinkle of his forehead.

Kururu spoke slowly and didactically as though Giroro were no more than a tadpole. "Five hours from now you turn him off OR he falls down and goes BOOM!" He radiated his arms outward to indicate a significant blast.

Giroro gulped. I must remember that.